Storage of instructions in computer memory to enable it to perform a variety of tasks in sequence or intermittently.
The idea was introduced in the late 1940s by John von Neumann , who proposed that a program be electronically stored in binary-number format in a memory device so that instructions could be modified by the computer as determined by intermediate computational results. Other engineers, notably John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert , contributed to this idea, which enabled digital computer s to become much more flexible and powerful. Nevertheless, engineers in England built the first stored-program computer, the Manchester Mark I, shortly before the Americans built EDVAC, both operational in 1949.